Two Centuries of Repton's Reputation

b r e n t e l l i o t t two centuries of repton’s reputation The reputation of Humphry Repton over the last two centuries has not shown the common pattern of decline and revival, but rather one of wobbling between the two phases of his career. During the Victorian period, he was looked on as the founder of modern gardening, his fragments and his plans for the Brighton Pavilion seen as sparking the revival of topiary and the flower garden. The twentieth century saw the increasing dominance of neo-Georgianism in British architecture and gardening, but Repton’s reputation did not suffer greatly as Victorian gardening was repudiated; attention shifted to his early works, seen as the continuation of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s aesthetic. Humphry repton’s reputation has had a degree of stability denied to most of his predecessors and successors. interpretations of his work may have varied, attacks may have been launched, but when one considers the way in which Brown’s reputation plummeted in the nineteenth century, to be relaunched in the mid-twentieth, one must say that repton’s has been enviably stable. there are two main reasons for this. the first is repton’s change of styles in mid-career. He began as the self-appointed successor to Brown, the culminating representative of the english landscape garden; but from c.1800 he began to reintroduce into his schemes formal terracing, flower gardens and other devices that Brown and his coevals had removed, sometimes with gunpowder. so, whatever the fortunes of the landscape style or of the Victorian garden that arose in reaction against it, repton could be held up as an exemplar. the second reason is the accessibility of repton’s writings. Brown, william Kent and charles Bridgeman did not publish. the writings of so many garden designers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are for the most part scattered through the poorly indexed volumes of long runs of periodicals. More than any other British designer before the mid-twentieth century, repton lived on through his published works. But before we go any further, we need to ask: how accessible were his writings? Jane austen’s reference to him in Mansfield Park (1814) and thomas Love peacock’s lampooning of him in Headlong Hall (1816) under the name of Mr Milestone, both appearing during his lifetime, show that he had a solid reputation among the landowning classes,1 but to what extent did gardeners, who in the ensuing generations assumed ever greater importance, know about him? the average gardener would only have seen Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794) or Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803) if his employer owned copies and allowed him to see them.2 so when charles M’intosh published The Flower-Garden (1838), incorporating into the engraving of the ‘italian garden’ a glass structure copied from repton’s plans for Brighton pavilion, we can assume that he had direct access to some at least of repton’s works.3 M’intosh was head gardener at claremont, and his employer had been Leopold, prince of the Belgians, who could undoubtedly have afforded copies, and may well have been given the Brighton volume by his father-in-law, George iV. 56 Roxborough Park, Harrow HA1 3AY, UK. Email: [email protected] two centuries of repton’s reputation 121 Gardeners at less prominent estates would have had to rely on report rather than direct access. But all that changed in 1840 with the publication of a pocket-sized anthology of his writings, under the editorship of John claudius Loudon.4 so the history of repton’s reputation really starts with Loudon, and his changing attitude to repton. Loudon’s repton Loudon began his career as a disciple of uvedale price, whose quarrel with repton over the picturesque had generated immense quantities of smoke, and possibly occasional light, at the end of the eighteenth century. therefore, it is not surprising that in his first comments on repton he definitely tookp rice’s side. in his early A Treatise on … Country Residences (1806), Loudon criticized repton’s works at Valleyfield inf ife, which repton had discussed in his Observations (1803): Had the reader seen it previously to the commencement of these operations, about five years ago, it would probably fill him with the deepest regret to see it at present, fresh from the improver’s desolating hand. […] the flower-garden, a right-lined canal, which its contriver endeavours to defend from the principles of contrast, and almost every other operation of wit at this place, in which effect is the principal consideration, is equally unnatural, misplaced, or out of character. the proprietor has thrown away an immense sum of money in counteracting nature, and deforming his grounds.5 repton had not visited Valleyfield in person, but quite possibly Loudon had not either. this is not the place to describe Loudon’s gradual conversion to the idea of formality in garden design. suffice it to say that by the 1820s he was re-evaluating repton. His references to repton’s landscaping projects became gradually more approving, at first with qualifications (‘it is but justice to the late Mr. repton to say […]’) and eventually more wholeheartedly (‘Mr. repton’s taste as a landscape-gardener is universally acknowledged’).6 By the time he wrote his introductory notice to his edition of repton, he was praising: what may be called repton’s school, and which may be considered as combining all that was excellent in the former schools, and, in fact, as consisting of the union of an artistical knowledge of the subject with good taste and good sense.7 ‘as all arts are necessarily progressive,’ he added, it was time to move beyond repton into the new school of the Gardenesque (i.e., Loudon’s school), but repton was now the acknowledged predecessor and foundation of future progress. Loudon’s aim was to make the works of repton accessible to the ordinary gardener. He announced his plan for the edition in his Gardener’s Magazine in 1838: the above works, the publishing prices of which amount to upwards of 20l., by reducing the engravings so as to come within an 8vo page, and by printing in the same type as that used for the Gardener’s Magazine, will be comprised in one octavo volume, which will be sold at 20s. or 25s. the copyright of such of Mr. repton’s works as had not expired in 1838 was purchased by Mr. Loudon in June in that year; and the engravings have been in hand since that time; so that it is expected the work will appear in february or March, 1839. Mr. repton’s taste as a landscape-gardener is universally acknowledged; and the publication of the whole of his works, at such a price as will enable every gardener to possess them, cannot fail to serve the cause of landscape-gardening.8 His plan for a follow-up volume containing other miscellaneous works on landscape design was not to be carried out, but nor did the eventual work appear at the originally intended price. By the time of the Gardeners’ Chronicle advertisement for the work 122 garden history 47 : suppl. 1 (9 January 1841), the estimated cost of repton’s original works had gone up to twenty- five pounds, and Loudon’s volume was offered at £1 s.3 6d. plain, or £1 10s. coloured. after Loudon’s death, when his widow was trying to pay off his debts, Loudon’s works were advertised in the Chronicle (12 april 1845), and his repton volume now cost £2 6s. or £3 6s. with coloured illustrations. still expensive, and not the sort of thing an under gardener could be expected to afford, but within the means of a well-off head gardener or your average estate owner. at least it meant that repton’s writings, and versions of his illustrations, were far more accessible to the gardening world than before. repton’s opponent price was not to be left behind, however, and sir thomas dick Lauder emulated Loudon by publishing a single-volume, pocket-sized edition of Sir Uvedale Price on the Picturesque in 1842.9 for this, price not having illustrated his Essays, Lauder commissioned new illustrations from Montagu stanley; so the advantage for the ordinary gardener of having access to price’s work was somewhat compromised by the possibility that the illustrations showed views that were not what price would have wished his ideas to be represented by. Loudon’s edition was reviewed anonymously in the weekly magazine the Athenaeum by John Lindley, who began by describing repton as ‘the head of a profession of great importance to the comfort and beauty of rural residences’, who, by his writings, made the principles of landscape gardening available to ‘the uneducated eye’, even though: their dearness has hitherto kept the writings of repton unknown to the great mass of readers […] we therefore hail with satisfaction the present beautiful edition by Mr. Loudon, himself a distinguished landscape gardener, which, by the substitution of good wood-cuts for costly engravings, has reduced the price within the means of any possessor of a library.10 repton’s sLides repton’s use of slides to depict gardens before and after his works were carried out was his great innovation in both marketing and book illustration. How these views were presented in subsequent editions of repton, and publications about him, is an important point. Before the modern age of offset photolithography, there was only one attempt to replicate his use of slides – John nolen’s american edition of The Art of Landscape Gardening (1907).11 for this, the after view was printed by halftone block on a leaf of shiny paper; the before view was similarly printed, but the leaf was cropped so that the lower half of the image was a stub, attached to the after view by an adhesive strip near the gutter.

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